Iran Ordered Pan Am Bombing, W. German Magazine Reports

Iran ordered the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and paid a Palestinian terrorist more than $1 million to carry out the bombing, a West German magazine said Monday.

Munich-based Quick said a bomb was placed aboard the Boeing 747 to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian civilian jet by the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf.

It said the Iranians paid Palestinian terrorist Ahmed Jibril $1.3 million to carry out the attack.

Pan Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground. British investigators determined that the plane was downed by a bomb hidden in a radio-cassette recorder.

Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt, West Germany, changed planes in London and was en route to New York when it exploded.

Quick said the decision to retaliate by attacking the plane was made in Tehran last summer, shortly after the Iran Air jetliner was downed by the U.S. guided missile cruiser Vincennes on July 3. The Navy said it mistook the passenger plane with 290 people aboard for an Iranian fighter jet.

The magazine said the decision to bomb an American plane was made in a “narrow circle” of close advisers to Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Quick report is the latest of many assigning blame for the disaster. Officially, authorities in West Germany, Britain and the United States say they do not know who blew up the aircraft.

Quick reported its information was based on “secret” minutes of the meeting in Tehran and said a Khomeini aide, Mehdi Karoubi, offered money to the group that would carry out the attack.

West German authorities are holding two suspected members of Jibril’s Syrian-supported group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. West German officials say they have no evidence to link the two men to the Pan Am bombing.

Meanwhile, Oliver Revell, deputy director of the FBI, was quoted by the magazine as saying: “Our investigating officials believe the explosive came onto the plane in Frankfurt. That does not mean that the bomb could not have been on a connecting flight to Frankfurt. However, we have every reason to believe that the bomb was taken on by Pan Am in Frankfurt.”